The Checkered Past of Murdoch-Windsor Relations—What Does It Mean for Royal Wedding Coverage?

News that Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. television channel BSkyB may [" target=blank">broadcast Kate Middleton and Prince William’s nuptials in 3-D](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/royal-wedding-3d-bskybn_803765.html%20%20) got us thinking about the media titan’s relationship to the Windsors. Today it’s just 3-D broadcasting—but yesterday, it was wiretapping. When it comes to the royal family, Murdoch’s titles aren’t afraid of pushing boundaries, or, one could argue, crossing the line.

Since the 1960s, Murdoch has owned the nation’s most well-read gossip tabs—News of the World and The Sun—and both have a history of aggressively pursuing royalty scoops. Granted, The Sun’s royalty coverage was more pronounced in the 1990s, when they participated in the media frenzy around Diana, Princess of Wales—especially following her divorce from Prince Charles. However, the paper still makes big headlines: in 2004, the tabloid sneakily took unauthorized photographs of the then 21-year-old Prince William and as punishment was temporarily barred from any media events where either Prince William or Prince Harry was present. (While Prince William was at school, photographs of him were published just once a year, so that he could enjoy privacy and relative normalcy as a student.) The photographs showed William fondly eyeing his female companion on a ski vacation. The lucky gal was none other than Middleton. At the time, one of the editors of The Sun defended the decision by arguing that the photographs were in the public’s interest. “One of William’s girlfriends could become Queen one day. Her subjects will be entitled to know all about her.”

The tabloid has continued to break some notorious gossip items, such as images of Prince Harry making an ill-advised costume choice when he attended a party dressed in Nazi regalia, and pictures of Wills and Kate indulging in rare P.D.A. And even though The Sun has been slacking in the Web department—the “Royalty” page hasn't been updated since before the engagement—if you search around its Web site long enough, you’ll find some juicy exclusives that really ought not to be buried: for example, news that, following their April marriage, the Queen will be allowing the couple two years out of the spotlight before they take on official royal duties. Your Royal Watch blogger called The Sun’s news desk and confirmed it’s still on the beat: “We only report stories when things are happening, but things have been happening, and we've reported them,” a staffer told us.

But when it comes to aggressive, nay, predatory royalty reporting, Murdoch’s star paper is News of the World, which is the Sunday sister paper to The Sun. The tabloid is constantly embroiled in phone-hacking scandals for illegally intercepting the voicemails of celebrities, politicians, and royals. The story really starts five years ago, in April 2006, when then royalty reporter Clive Goodman ran a piece in News of the World revealing how Prince Harry received a joke phone message from his brother, Prince William, who berated him for his antics at a lap-dancing club while imitating Harry’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, Chelsy Davy. The stories quoted the elder Prince's voicemails verbatim, and palace staff was alarmed. Were reporters listening to the Prince’s cell-phone calls? A court case ensued, and by early 2007, Goodman had been sentenced to several months in jail for the privacy violation. At the time, the paper played off the incident as an isolated case of a bad-apple editor, as it were, and then editor-in-chief Andy Coulson was eager to distance himself from the practice, claiming he had not known about it. He even promised a substantial donation by the paper to a charity of the Prince’s choice. (Coulson left the paper in 2007, and was soon after hired by David Cameron, now prime minister, as an aide.) However, a few years later, several other editors were implicated in phone hacking, and Murdoch’s News Corp. had to shell out more than $1.5 million in settlements. In an in-depth report that year, The New York Times suggested that hacking into high-profile individuals’ phones for scoops was standard practice in the frantic newsroom of the tabloid. “It was an industry-wide thing,” the Times quote an employee as saying. “Every hack [Ed: nice one!] on every newspaper knew this was done.”

This story just won’t die. In fact, yesterday Scotland Yardannounced it would reopen its investigation into the tabloid’s illegal interception of celebrities, politicians, and royals’ phone messages, citing “new, fresh evidence.” Earlier this month, Sienna Miller named editors of the tabloid in a lawsuit claiming her phone had been hacked. Last week, former editor Coulson quit his position as an aide to the prime minister, saying, “Unfortunately continued coverage of events connected to my old job at the News of the World has made it difficult for me to give the 110 percent needed in this role.” Coulson’s two old bosses—the conservative Murdoch and the Conservative Party leader Cameron—have a noted chummy relationship.

News of the World has also used undercover reporters, whose aggressive techniques at least flirt with entrapment. Last year, one of the tabloid’s reporters posed as a wealthy businessman and secretly taped Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, making some shady deals. In the tape, a reporter appears to hand the Duchess $40,000 as a down payment on the more than $700,000 the Duchess charged for access to her former husband, Prince Andrew, Duke of York—also the U.K. ’s special representative for International Trade and Investment. (The Duchess has been suffering with a liquidity problem in recent years.) Later that year, Sarah sought absolution on Oprah. We’re always rooting for the Duchess—she won us over with her colorful, if slightly muddled, account of leading eight mentally challenged individuals on a Himalayan mountain trek.